Tuesday, 21 May 2019, Night
Paxwood, Whatcom County, Washington, USA
Eyewitness: Kerry
“I think that dog is following us.”
Char and I were meandering around the main paved loop trail in one of Paxwood’s many neighborhood parks, a perfect place for a picnic. She had a literal picnic basket. I just had a plastic grocery bag with some snacks, sodas, and a blanket. Early in our friendship, I hadn’t yet learned that her mother was a caterer who had these kinds of things on hand.
We’d been talking about the town’s ghost stories on and off for days, but that Saturday’s picnic plan was searching for fairy circles. Flowers, mushrooms, and ferns could all form natural fairy circles, or we could make an intentional one with pebbles. Paxwood only had a few fairy stories compared to the plentiful ghost stories, but there were enough to spark my curiosity.
I looked over my shoulder and I saw the dog that Char was talking about, about thirty feet back.
“Probably smells the food,” I reasoned.
“What should we do?”
“Ignore it,” I said, turning away from it. “Or, if you want to make friends, we could feed it?”
“Let’s just ignore it.”
A couple of days later, walking home from middle school together, we saw the dog again. This time, it was padding along between unfenced yards, three or four houses behind us.
“Could it be the same dog?” Char wondered.
“It’s like a shadow, following us,” I said. “Let’s ask Old Man Morgan.”
“Old Man Morgan?”
“He’s on the way to my home, and he knows all the folklore and the ghost stories and the urban legends of Paxwood. If he’s sitting out on his porch or his garage is open, we can talk to him.”
Compare Old Man Morgan to his nephew Adrien Morgan, and it was night and day. Now, years later, knowing magic is real, I recognized how Old Man Morgan had been arming me with knowledge from the first time I ran into him to the day he died. Back then, as a middle schooler, I took him as a town oddity or… a grandfather, but not my personal grandfather.
Old Man Morgan’s garage door was open, and he was sitting on a lawn chair in his driveway with his long-furred gray tabby cat stalking around him on a long tether—another of those details that made him an oddity. There weren’t too many people who walked their indoor cats. Usually, they either let their cats roam free through a cat door, or they kept them locked up inside their whole lives. Inside the garage, an eclectic collection of tools and trinkets filled shelves and mounted cabinets.
Char and I sat down on the long bench opposite his lawn chair, and after I introduced Char, I asked my question.
“What does it mean if there’s a black dog following you?”
“You never ask me anything easy,” Old Man Morgan said, smiling. “Now, many people take the black dog to be a death omen or a sign of danger. Death omens take many forms in many cultures. If you have ravens or crows following you, or you hear an owl hooting at night, or a black cat crosses your path, these may be taken as signs that you or someone you care about is near death.”
I shivered. “So, if we’re seeing a black dog following us, then one of us might die?”
“That’s only one dire perspective,” Old Man Morgan said, shaking his head. “There are some black dogs in folklore that act as guardians or guides. Stories of a black dog leading a lost traveler through a forest, for example. And, whether it’s an omen, a warning, or a guide, it’s a reminder to take precautions and keep the ones you love close to you, not a reason to be afraid. Can’t control the future, but we can control our present. Now, where did you see this black dog roaming around? If it’s a stray, I’ll find it a home.”
We never saw the black dog following us again after that. Maybe Old Man Morgan was a town guardian, like Adrien, and he’d kept us safe from danger. Or it really had just been a stray dog. A coincidence.
But… that ear.
My dreaming mind brought me from those long ago memories to the day’s events, the moment in the basement when I’d wanted to pet the tranquilized dog. It had a notched ear. Its left ear, notched.
And the dog that had been following us in the park?
I reached for the middle school memory brought fresh into my mind and drew the dog forward from between the trees.
It had the same notch in the same ear.
“Your dreamscape is something else,” Bast said, moving up beside me.
He startled me. Some part of me knew I was asleep and dreaming, that all these memories coming to me were part of my subconscious mind processing information, but usually when I acknowledged I was dreaming, I got pulled straight out of the dream.
Bast’s presence must have been anchoring me in place.
“What do you mean?” I asked, turning toward him. Even if he looked different, it was definitely Bast. Now he was wearing a Mariners baseball shirt, a ball cap over his wavy brown hair, jeans, and off-brand sneakers. He looked more or less like a normal teen.
“I didn’t mean to spy on your memories,” he said, waving. “Didn’t want to interrupt the sequence while it was flowing and break whatever train of thought you were on. That’s all. Memories are usually more crisp, vivid. But most people’s memories are still pretty foggy. You remember what you want to remember, and your current mind fills in anything else with its own bias. But your memory is ultra-high-definition. There’s very little Gaussian blur.”
“So, these two dogs are as I saw them in that moment, even though it was years apart?”
Bast shrugged. “It’s possible. I’m not an expert memory analyst or anything. I only know what I’ve experienced, and I have never experienced such sharp, precise memories while walking around through someone’s dreamscape.”
Humming, I looked between the black dog of the past and the black dog of the present. They sure looked like the same dog. If I wasn’t just dreaming it, if it really was accurate to the moment of observation, that could be significant.
“Do you always check up on your damsels to make sure they get home safely, or is this visit special?” I asked then, turning toward him with a smile.
“Starting to think you’re special,” Bast replied, still staring at the twin memory dogs. “I do like to follow up and make sure everything’s back to normal when I’ve intervened somewhere, though. Unfinished business inevitably becomes trouble.”
“And you don’t need more trouble if you’re already dealing with the Grinner, right, Night Fox?” I smiled. “Can we… talk more about that here, now?”
“Better not to tempt fate. I think you’re clear from those ghost ladies as long as you stay out of their demesne, but the Grinner’s influence has far-reaching tendrils, and you don’t want to attract the sort of Nightmares that flock to him,” Bast said.
“Understood.” I looked him over again. He really couldn’t be that much older than me. “Anything I can do for you while you’re fighting an impossible battle against the King of Nightmares or whatever? People in the waking world who might want to know you’re safe? That kind of thing?”
Bast’s smile turned forced, masking something deep. Pain, memory, trauma he didn’t want to touch. “No, nothing like that. Keep yourself safe. That’s all. Sweet dreams, Kerry. Nothing but sweet dreams.”
Flickering, he saluted as he left my dreamscape.
Oh, he did not like to talk about himself. Slumberland, comic book banter, even my safety were all safe topics, but Bast fled from one offer of help. If I wanted to know more about him, I’d need softball questions.
I turned my attention back to the memories of two black dogs for another moment. Then my sleeping mind wandered, and the usual variety of forgettable dreams carried me for the rest of the night.
The next morning, when my phone buzzed with a message from Char while I was slurping down the last dredges of my cereal milk, our black dog encounter was so fresh on my mind. I wanted to spring right in and text with her about it, see what she remembered, but when I read the message, my heart plummeted right back into the pits of my stomach.
Char: Thank you for the necklace, but I really just can’t spend time with you right now. I need to grow up.
I jammed my phone in my pocket without replying, rinsed my bowl, and deposited it into the dishwasher before leaving for school. At least I had my answer.
